His presentation titled “Foundations of Phonetics: Supporting Children into Literacy” takes a deep dive into the Science of Reading (SoR) and its role in literacy development. The class examined words like “sheep” and broke them down into their fundamental sounds and grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GCPs), the relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Students also learned about active and reactive words to word families.
Additional topics included the gradual decline of reading ability in schools, an analysis of Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess, and breakout group discussions on language and vocabulary in books.
By connecting literacy research with practical applications, Savage highlights the importance of phonetics and shows how future educators can apply it in their work.
